GILROY
– Luigi Aprea Elementary School will offer its students more
time – after school – to explore subjects that pique their
interest.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – Luigi Aprea Elementary School will offer its students more time – after school – to explore subjects that pique their interest.
“We want them to have something to do after school,” Principal Sergio Montenegro said, “because it’s kind of hard to fit what we used to do in school with today’s time frame because of so many requirements from the state or the district. And many times they don’t have time to do things like crafts or arts or science.”
The “Bulldog Bonus Days” idea was launched earlier this month when Montenegro asked interested teachers and parents to volunteer to teach a class in their favorite subject.
“These kinds of home-grown type of program structures have a big impact on the student population,” Montenegro said. “This will give them time to do interesting things and spend time with parents or teachers.”
The Bonus Days are starting small, as only one teacher offered to run a club. First-grade teacher Pam Tognetti will help students publish an art and literary magazine featuring students’ creative writing, essays, poetry and art, possibly including photography. There has even been discussion about selling the final product as a fund raiser for the school.
Plans for the after-school club are still in the works, but the school is roughly modeling the Bonus Days after the district’s after-school academies for Gifted And Talented Education students.
“We want to challenge our high-achieving GATE students, and this is one way of doing it – after school,” Montenegro said. “It’s not just going to be for GATE students, though, it will include all students.”
Luigi’s club, which is open to any interested student in grades four and five, will meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays from mid-January to mid-February. It will not interfere with two GATE academies, which have been slow to start this year but are set to begin this week and run through early February.
If the after-school club is a success, more sessions could follow. Ideally, the possibilities for clubs would be endless, Montenegro said, and could include chess, dance, theater, math or technology-related subjects, depending on the interest of teachers and parents.
“Parents can coordinate with a teacher who’s also interested, or someone who’s experienced with (a subject) or has some sort of interest that a parent is able to assist with,” Montenegro said.
Two parents have already volunteered to help Tognetti run the club and produce the magazine.
Tognetti will probably be paid a small stipend from the school’s budget for running the club, Montenegro said.
